The Forgotten Field
General:
Carl Brumbaugh - One of the Most
Significant Quarterbacks of Early NFL
by Steve Jacoby

Chronologically if not alphabetically, the
conversation about the best NFL quarterbacks of all time begins with Sammy Baugh and
extends through Michael Vick. Sprinkled in between are the names Luckman, Unitas,
Bradshaw, Montana and Marino, each of whom enjoyed All-Pro careers that included
championship berths as a prelude to enshrinement in Canton.

But one of the most significant signal callers of the 20th
century cannot be found in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, nor in the typical barroom
discussion about the league's alltime best.

Instead, one must look off the beaten path to West Milton,
admittedly little more than a rest stop along the road to football immortality, but
important nonetheless in pro football history.

For West Milton was where Carl "Brummy" Brumbaugh
was born, and where his legacy lives on today.

Early days of football

Despite being in business for the better part of a
quarter-century, professional football in the 1920s had yet to gain a toehold in America's
sporting consciousness. At the time, it ranked behind its forerunner, college football, in
both popularity and credibility, and far behind professional sports such as baseball and
boxing.

For what it was worth, by the early 1900s Ohio had
established itself as the epicenter of pro football. It had been home to the Ohio League,
one of the first confederations of pro teams. When the NFL formed in 1920, six of the
original teams - including the Dayton Triangles - were based in Ohio.

Still, the sport struggled to find a following. Average
attendance was less than 9,000 per game. Franchises came and went. Interest, at best, was
tepid.

Carl Brumbaugh, however, loved the game. In the early
1920s, he began playing high school football against the wishes of his father, Levi, who
viewed the sport as a violent game.

Levi relented - the story goes, after seeing his son romp
for a touchdown in his first prep game - and Carl went on to a solid career as a high
school halfback in West Milton.

After graduation from West Milton in 1924, the younger
Brumbaugh opted to play at Ohio State University, where he earned a letter as a freshman.
A year later, after receiving little playing time as a sophomore, Brumbaugh transferred to
the University of Florida.

In Florida, Brumbaugh started as a single-wing halfback on
squads that displayed improvement. As a senior in 1928, he scored three touchdowns in
seven minutes against Auburn and went on to rank second in the nation in scoring with 106
points.

A year later, Brumbaugh returned to Ohio to play semipro
football with a succession of teams, each stop providing less opportunity than the one
before.

A day's drive to the west, the Chicago Bears found
themselves in unfamiliar territory. The Bears, who were the bellwethers of the early NFL,
had experienced their first losing season in 1929.

They needed a fresh look on offense, including someone to
trigger it. Enter Charlie Bachman, Brumbaugh's college coach and a friend and former
teammate of George Halas, then coach of the Chicago Bears.

Bachman urged Halas to give Brumbaugh a tryout.

Brumbaugh entered the 1930 season competing for time at
running back with rookie Bronko Nagurski and the famed Red Grange.

"I came up as a halfback," Brumbaugh said.
"But when I saw Red Grange and some of the others on the team, I decided I was a
quarterback."

Arrival in Chicago

But more than just feet and pounds, quarterbacks in those
days were measured by different criteria. They were expected to run offenses -
conservative offenses at that - and leave the heavy lifting to bulldogs such as Grange and
Nagurski.

Brumbaugh's arrival in Chicago coincided with that of Ralph
Jones, Halas' successor as coach of the Bears. Jones was brought in to revitalize
Chicago's T-formation attack. He quickly recognized that Brumbaugh, with his quick feet
and deceptive fakes, was the perfect guy to orchestrate it.

When Joey Sternaman was injured in Chicago's 1930 season
opener, Brumbaugh took over as the Bears' starting quarterback, a job he held for the next
five years. Although he never completed more than nine passes in a season, Brumbaugh
became, as one observer put it, "one of the truly great quarterbacks."

"I love the football so much that I hug it like a
child," Brumbaugh said. "I love to run with it. But now I believe that I am
getting smarter. I give it to Nagurski."

He exhibited a rare understanding of the T formation,
channeling the teachings of Jones and Halas while employing sleight-of-hand worthy of
another contemporary, the illusionist Harry Houdini.

Potsy Clark, the coach of the rival Detroit Lions, called
Brumbaugh the "smartest quarterback in the league," a sentiment often echoed by
Halas.

Brumbaugh capped his rookie season by leading Chicago to a
9-4-1 mark, a near reversal of its disastrous 1929 campaign. After another solid season in
1931, the Bears were poised to regain their spot atop pro football in 1932.

After a sluggish start, Chicago finished strong by going
unbeaten - five wins, three ties - over its final eight games to tie Portsmouth for the
league title. With buzz about the league growing, NFL commissioner Joe Carr decided the
league needed a boost.

A championship game - the first of its kind - between
Chicago and Portsmouth might do it.

One problem: Wrigley Field, then the home of the Bears and
the logical venue for such a game, had been covered by a blizzard, so the NFL decided to
move the game indoors to Chicago Stadium, which workers hastily converted to accommodate
football.

While it beat the cold and snow of Wrigley Field, the
retrofitted Chicago Stadium was only 80 yards long by 40 yards wide, about two-thirds the
size of a regulation field. It had hosted a circus the day before the game.

It was on that makeshift field that Chicago and Portsmouth
- the league's two glamour teams - played to a scoreless tie through the better part of
three quarters, no great surprise since Chicago had played to six ties during the regular
season.

However, on fourth-and-goal from the Portsmouth 2 late in
the third quarter, fullback Bronko Nagurski took the handoff from Brumbaugh, darted
forward toward the goal line, threw on the brakes, retreated two steps and tossed the
winning touchdown pass to a wide-open Red Grange.

Those on the Portsmouth team immediately cried foul. In
those days, forward passes were to be thrown no closer than five yards from the line of
scrimmage. Nagurski's toss clearly violated the standing rule, which was overturned the
following year, paving the way for the evolution of the modern passing game.

Many innovations

The Portsmouth pass was one of many innovations to which
Brumbaugh either contributed to or accomplished on his own. Brumbaugh and George Trafton,
the Bears center, developed the one-handed center snap, which allowed Trafton a free arm
for more effective blocking and also delivered the ball to the quarterback with the laces
in the correct position for passes.

Similarly, Brumbaugh joined forces with Jack Manders, the
Bears' kicker, to perfect the holds on placekicks. Brumbaugh spun the ball so that the
laces pointed toward the goal, decreasing wind resistance that might affect the flight of
the ball.

In a game against the Green Bay Packers during his rookie
season, Brumbaugh worked with Grange on the concept - which is commonplace today - of
using a man in motion. The innovation effectively ended the stacked, seven-man defensive
front.

According to one historian, "Jones, Brumbaugh and
Grange ... opened up a trail for future generations of T-formation quarterbacks to
follow."

Chicago repeated as NFL champs in 1933, defeating the New
York Giants 23-21, in the first playoff between winners of the western and eastern
divisions.

The two teams met again for the NFL title in 1934, with the
Giants rallying to end the Bears' dominance, 30-13. Still, it was no fault of Brumbaugh,
who guided Chicago to wins in 13 of its regular season games and who, his teammates said,
was the "best field general in the National League."

Brumbaugh, however, wanted to be paid as one of the game's
best, a desire that did not align with the frugal ways of owner George Halas. After the
two sides failed to agree on a contract for the 1935 season, Brumbaugh left the Bears for
an assistant coaching job at West Virginia University.

Although Brumbaugh returned to the Bears in 1936 and went
to play three more pro seasons, his experience at West Virginia would be the tonic for
life after the NFL. After retiring from the NFL in 1938, Brumbaugh spent the next decade
teaching the T formation to pro and college teams.

From the Bears - where he worked with the godfather of the
T, Clark Shaughnessy - and on to Boston College, the University of Cincinnati, Holy Cross,
Louisiana State and the NFL's Chicago Cardinals, Brumbaugh spread the word.

He even gained fame for introducing the offense to high
school teams in Massachusetts. Noted Harry Arlenson, the former coach at Weymouth (Mass.)
High, Brumbaugh was "responsible for putting the modern T into (Massachusetts) high
school football."

Brumbaugh's tutorials must have worked: BC, UC and LSU all
went to bowls after learning his T formation.

Even the woebegone Chicago Cardinals, one of the NFL's
worst teams, finished above .500 in 1946, the first year they used Brumbaugh's T. The next
year, they won the NFL's Western Division title.

In the 1950s, Brumbaugh left coaching to pursue interests
outside the game. He eventually turned to the media, broadcasting University of Dayton
football games in 1953.

In 1964, he pitched the concept of instant replay to ABC
television and worked on a stillborn idea for a radio or television program to be called
Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow in Sports.

Brumbaugh died of a heart attack in 1969. Although not
enshrined in either the Bears' or the NFL's halls of fame, Brumbaugh nonetheless was among
the game's most significant signal callers and one of its early innovators.

As the Chicago Sun-Times noted, "Here was Carl
Brumbaugh, the ... daring quarterback whose insane recklessness won more than one game for
the Bears."

BRUMBAUGH'S ACHIEVMENTS

NFL titles: Led Bears to back-to-back championships in 1932
and 1933

T formation: The foremost architect of the modern offense

Center snap: Helped perfect the one-handed exchange

Placekicks: Refined holds by spinning laces toward goalposts

Man-in-motion: Helped develop play that ended the seven-man
defensive front